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For the Navajo, turquoise is believed to ensure favor with one’s yei, a holy being who mediates between worlds. Navajo artisans in Arizona create these earrings and necklace using smooth cabochons set in sterling silver. The necklace also has a strand of blue and green turquoise disks.

Believed to bestow the wearer with courage, luck, health, and protection, turquoise has been used in jewelry making for millennia by cultures as diverse as the Navajo, ancient Egyptians, and Tibetans. Turquoise can range in color from light yellow-green to dark blue, and usually contains turquoise matrix, the dark veins of other minerals with which it developed. It figures in the creation myth of the Anasazi Indians, who tell that the tribe first entered the world through the mouth of a New Mexico cave that is now a turquoise mine. In Tibet, the sky is called "the turquoise of heaven," and both men and women value jewelry featuring the gem in sky blue hues. Turquoise is sometimes given as a love token to one's betrothed, because its color is said to remain pure as long as the affection lasts.